Gavin’s (Jason Watkins) healthy eating campaign has fallen decidedly flat and is affecting Valco’s sales figures, in the first of this week’s instalments. Cheryl (Sarah Parish) doesn’t know how to tell him and Duncan (Rufus Hound) is still lurking around and being generally obnoxious, ready to pray on the fact that Gavin’s scheme has failed.

Colin (Carl Rice) is actually tired of sex, since he and Lisa (Beverley Rudd) started to try for a baby she has been wearing out the lazy butcher and he chooses Gavin to confide in, while Gavin is eating his breakfast… I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. The other hilarious storyline featured this episode involves Neville (Dominic Coleman) and Linda (Faye McKeever), Neville is teaching Linda to drive, with disastrous consequences. Sue (Lorraine Cheshire) actually starts to side with Neville having been in his shoes before and put her life into Linda’s hands as she took the wheel. It shows an interesting dynamic to the relationship of Linda and Sue, it’s so unusual for Sue to be on Neville’s side, however when Sue’s car is pranged during another of Linda’s lessons – Neville gets the blame. Normal services resumes. We also got two fantastic one-liners from Sue, “bell end” and “knob end”, two simple phrases that absolutely creased me up, demonstrating how Cheshire’s comic timing brilliantly.

Meanwhile, Duncan is starting to spread vicious rumours that the store is set to close and jobs will be lost due to Gavin’s healthy eating debacle. We see Margaret (Rita May) worrying about cancelling a holiday that she has not insurance for and isn’t actually going on(!) and Colin showing more concern for the fact that Duncan has claimed that Gavin sits down to go for a wee! Plus what would become of Neville? He can’t go back to the RSPCA if he’s out of a job (it’s the YMCA but Margaret has a different take on it, as usual!).

As Cheryl considers signing on the dotted line to allow a new energy drink from Duncan’s company to be sold in store, the future looks bleak for Ms Fairweather and her Gaveroo…

All of the cast, including some of the newer additions all play their roles so brilliantly and naturally that I find myself forgetting about the actors behind them. Surely that is the mark of an all-round epic comedy series.